Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark
This game... wow... this game broke me. No other game release has depressed or angered me to this extent. War for Cybertron is a very special game to me, and to see Edge of Reality put out this trash and have Activision say it's related is insulting. It's insulting to the fans, it's insulting to High Moon, it's insulting to the game industry in general. One thing I'd like to get straight is that I didn't go into this game wanting to hate it. I rented it because I was smart, but I didn't actually want to dislike it as a game. As a product, it's despicable no matter how you spin it but as long as Edge of Reality could pull off something worth my time if not my money I'd be happy. It wasn't worth my time. Campaign - Story The story, quite simply, is bad. It's bad in every sense of the word. It's boring and fails as a fun cheesy story, and is nonsensical and annoying as a serious story. The writers bring about inconsistent quality, with the occasional burst of witty dialogue inbetween a muck of generic dialogue. For being a "cross-over," no advantage is actually taken of the premise. Instead of having two dimensions clash, they instead chose to try and imply they were connected, despite the many inconsistencies and general incompatibility brought on by High Moon's obvious contempt for Michael Bay's films. Instead of giving us the opportunity to see new characters that weren't in Fall of Cybertron, such as Wheeljack, a character who even had a full playable model ready to go, we instead see reappearances of most of Fall's characters, the only truly new characters being Drift and Lockdown. The writers don't seem to have much of an idea of what to do with Drift and Lockdown either. All Drift ever does is complain about having to use guns and dribble on and on about "honor" this and "honor" that. All Lockdown does is cook up the exact scheme Megatron would probably cook up in the exact same situation, and only differentiates himself by constantly reminding the player how he is only motivated by profit. The game lacks any truly memorable or exciting moments, something that Fall of Cybertron was filled with, and has one of the worst third acts I've ever experienced in a game. It doesn't try anything new, it only retreads Fall of Cybertron with infinitely less interesting dialogue, plot, and level design. Speaking of which: Campaign - Gameplay This is Fall of Cybertron dlc, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I don't mean like what people say about new Call of Dutys, I mean this is literally the same game. The weapons, the sound effects, the music, the graphics, it's all recycled except for in the Earth sections, where we see the worst visuals of a major console Transformer game to date last gen on up. Yes, they are worse then Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers 1, which is extra surprising considering how little new assets they even created for the game. While it has Fall of Cybertron's skin, it has no structure to hold it up from becoming a blubbery mess. The level designs are basic, and often times cram you into confined spaces that are hard to maneuver in, or other-wise send you on needlessly drawn out fetch quests or force you to defend an area for a certain amount of time for the sake of drawing out run time. This includes a section where you need to literally spend five minutes holding out in an area waiting for a train to arrive, a train that blows up the moment it leaves anyway. Where Fall of Cybertron's levels were designed around the characters and their abilities to keep bringing something new to the table (the reason co-op was removed) every level in Rise of the Dark Spark is generic and interchangeable, the only exceptions being Sideswipe's level which kind of takes advantage of the grapple hook ability but still gives you a far inferior version of Jazz's level from Fall, and the couple of levels where you have to fly over a large gap because you are a jet. Honestly they should have included co-op, and they should have let you just swap out characters whenever, it's not like the plot is worth listening to anyway. Edge of Reality also shows no basic understanding of why High Moon made any of the choices they made. The Titans for example, a large, bullet-spongey mini-boss enemy that only appeared in the later rounds of Escalation and around two times in Fall of Cybertron's campaign, has now been sprinkled throughout the game wherever they could have been placed, including perplexingly in Grimlock's level. To put it simply, Grimlock was not made to fight Titans and it shows when this game forces you to. Grimlock's level also lacks Insecticons, which were kind of made specifically for it. Finally, Grimlock's level also takes away your sense of empowerment that you were given in Fall, the fun dialogue is gone, the Insecticons are gone, the terrain is ugly and glitchy, and they also removed the mechanic where you had to build rage to transform into a T-Rex, a mechanic that once again was put there for a reason. It feels like they had a ten year old on the design team whining about how he wanted to be a T-Rex ALL THE TIME and they gave into his demands. It removes alot of the impact and fun that Grimlock had in Fall of Cybertron. The final fight in particular is one of the worst final levels I've ever sat through. Bland, grey corridors, insta-kill rooms and enemies everywhere, and a horrifically bland final boss. Without spoiling, the final boss's AI is poor, is prone to getting stuck, and has a slow-down move that allows him to easily perform an insta-kill attack on you all while having an unreasonably large amount of health. No fun music plays, the dialogue does nothing more then draw more attention to the plots absolute worst part, and the terrain while simple constantly traps your character and doesn't allow him to move correctly, all leading up to an under-whelming cutscene and one funny scene that I would have appreciated alot more if any other part of the game displayed any quality. Finally, they also decided to innovatively include a "Gear Box" system, and a level up system into the campaign. The level up system has no effect on the game whatsoever and the Gear Box system is only an annoying and tedious way for the game to give you all the equipment and characters you had back in Fall of Cybertron. They will quickly start to just give you duplicates of items, and when you get a duplicate an annoying, unskippable animation always plays. The game is also extremely generous with handing these out, you are guaranteed powerful equipment and all the characters you could ever want with barely any play time. They quickly become tedious and then aggravating to slowly sift through. Escalation Above everything else, this is the most perplexing. This goes above and beyond the capacities of the "low-budget" excuse to the point where I want to get up and scream "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING WHEN THEY MADE THIS!?" This is the only multiplayer mode, and it's mostly just the recycled maps from War for Cybertron's base game (the not very good ones) and Fall of Cybertron, with two new maps taking place on Earth. The maps are trash, the two Earth one's are too easy due to their small and poor design, funneling enemies through single spawn points and allowing for easy defending. They are one small arena and nothing more, and upon playing the recycled maps I discovered they made them WORSE. The doors, the weapons, the equipment, all removed, destroying any sense of progression and making the game too easy. Now, all points are spent on upgrading over-powered traps. The experiences of desperately running around the map for equipment or away from powerful enemies is gone. Now there is only pick a spot to camp where you can spend the match working on upgrading the traps. It all feels like what a twelve year old would create as a mod. The game simply hands out whatever equipment and abilities you want from the start, and through a simple over-looked exploit of reequipping a weapon you can get instant unlimited ammo refills. The only true improvement is the ability to play as whatever character on whatever map, it's just that they did what they could to screw that up to. You need to back out of the Escalation menus, go all the way back to the main menu, and then go to a specific screen to select your preferred Autobot and Decepticon character, because of course that's efficient design. The new bosses are also hilariously bad, the AI is stupid and lifeless, surviving only on being bullet sponges with over-powered over-accurate weapons. It's amazing. Conclusion Pros *Some funny dialogue *Transformers *Solid framework and fun weapons Cons *Horrible, cheap level design *Poor, boring, nonsensical story *Pointlessly bad Escalation mode *Buggiest game in the series *We've seen all of this before, and better! Final Recommendation Avoid at all costs, tell your friends to avoid, let this one slide away and be forgotten. You are sure to get more enjoyment from simply replaying Fall or War, or even Dark of the Moon, then you are going to get from this game. If you are a hardcore fan like me, rent it, borrow it, buy it used, just don't support it and don't get yourself ripped off. Let us hope Activision is merciful and actually gives us a proper game next year or the year after. Why just read though when you can see just how bad this is!? So I've gone through the trouble of making some videos: *A playthrough the game's final level parodying the average Youtube commentator. *A serious look at Escalation. Category:2014 Reviews